Cargo Handling

Core industries operates one of the world’s largest bulk woodchip handling facilities for customers manufacturing pulp, paper and medium density fiberboard. In September 2018 a Yildiz Entegre woodchip vessel arrived at Theodore Industrial Port for the loading of southern yellow pine woodchips. The loading process involves large rubber tired and track dozers pushing the woodchips from storage piles into reclaim pits that transfers the woodchips onto belt conveyors and then to a traveling shiploader. The woodchips then flow through a telescoping chute which is positioned inside the vessels hold and finally onto a belt jet slinger which stows and compacts the woodchips in the woodchip carriers hold. Core loaded approximately 48,000 short tons of woodchips onto the carrier. The vessel was at port for two days before transporting the woodchips to Turkey. Core has vast knowledge in the woodchip industry which allowed them to get the job finished quickly and successfully.

In January 2018 Core received 6 umbilical reels that were unloaded and stored onto Core’s dockside long term storage. In August 2018 Core loaded the umbilical reels onto a barge that were transpooled to Technip’s vessel, the Deep Blue. This was part of Anadarko’s Constellation Project located in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the reels were transpooled, the barges returned to dock where Core then unloaded the empty reels and loaded them out onto a vessel to return to France. Core Industries long term storage facilities and heavy lift capabilities made it ideal to complete this project.

PLS International, a division of Port Blakely, supplies responsibly-sourced logs from the Pacific Northwest and the U.S. Southeast to destinations worldwide. PLS International purchases logs from Northern California to British Columbia on the west coast and throughout the U.S. Southeast for export to Japan, South Korea, China, and India. In April 2018 they hired Core industries to receive and load out southern yellow pine logs on a vessel bound for overseas market. Core constructed the plan in which they used a material handler to unload, tally and stockpile the logs and then load out the logs onto a vessel traveling to Nanao, Japan carrying 4783 tons of timber. Due to CORE’s experience in wood and exporting, Core was the perfect fit for this project.

SCB International is a leader and innovator which has provided materials sourcing and solutions for over 30 years. SCB hired Core to offload 35,000 tons of copper slag, commonly known as “Black Beauty.” When the ship arrived at the port, the copper slag was directly offloaded by Core’s owned Piner Smag grabs (buckets) utilizing the ships cranes. The slag was discharged into hoppers, loaded into trucks and delivered to Mobile Abrasives Inc. Core provided all the necessary facilities, personnel and equipment to discharge the copper slag efficiently and economically. Once again proving Core’s ability to be a complete solutions provider to its customers.

AIA Recycling is a South-Korean company that recycles the steel byproduct of manufacturing in two automobile plants located in the Southeast U.S. This is new steel that can be repurposed and fed back into the manufacturing process. AIA compresses this scrap steel into bundles weighing about a ½ metric ton each. They approached Core to devise a solution for stockpiling this scrap and loading 40,000-50,000 tons at a time onto vessels for shipping back to South Korea.

To effectively and efficiently handle this type of product, we engineered 10 specialized loading pans to facilitate loading using the ship’s cranes, with all four cranes operating simultaneously. These pans are 24-feet in length and curved on the inside to properly handle the bundled steel. These pans are similar to skip pans, but we needed to devise a safe way to operate the pans with the ship’s cranes that only had one hoist line (which is not conducive for dumping traditional skip pans that require a two-line system).

The solution was to create a self-unhooking mechanism so that when the spreader bar picks up the pan and sets it down in the vessel, it is able to release on one end, allowing the scrap to be dumped as the pan is lifted back out of the vessel. This solution was a game changer because it allowed maximum productivity with all four cranes dumping pans at once. We are capable of loading vessels with 40,000-50,000 tons of scrap steel within a week using this method.

Since March 2016, Core has provided ongoing cargo handling support to Yildiz Entegre USA, a global leader in the manufacturing of forestry products. Yildiz was seeking to source pine woodchips in the Southeast for use in making medium density fiberboard, and after finding that supply, they needed to engineer an efficient and economical means of shipping that supply to Turkey, their homebase.

Our facility is one of the leading woodchip handling operations in the world based on storage capacity and vessel loading speed. We are equipped to receive woodchips by both barge and truck. For this particular project, we receive woodchips five days per week at up to 100 trucks per day, or approximately 2,800 short tons, which are dumped and conveyed into stockpiles on storage pads. Our shiploader has the longest jet slinger ever built to distribute chips in vessel holds in order to achieve the best compaction factor. Employing these methods for receiving, storing and loading, we are able to facilitate shipping of several hundred thousand metric tons of woodchips per year for Yildiz. Our facility is currently equipped to handle in excess of 2 million tons per year.

Yildiz dispatches a ship to Theodore Industrial Port approximately once a month to be loaded. We load approximately 44,000 metric tons each ship loading. Our facility has an automated system whereby we push the woodchips into chain reclaimers that then transfer the chips onto belt conveyors. These conveyors then transport the woodchips to a traveling shiploader that delivers the chips into the vessel holds.

In March 2016, Core used its newly refurbished wood chip facility to transfer 44,000 metric tons of wood chips onto the Andalucia. The wood chips were then carried to an overseas medium density fiberboard manufacturing facility.

In March 2016, Core loaded approximately 50,000 metric tons of scrap metal onto the vessel Scarabe to be shipped to Korea. This shipload of scrap was part of an ongoing project with a Greenville based recycling company and two of the largest motor vehicle manufacturing companies in the world. Core supplied all of the equipment and personnel necessary to successfully complete the job.

In January, Core loaded the first wood chip boat of 2016 for Delta Forest Products. Approximately 44,000 metric tons of wood chips were loaded onto the marine vessel Yildazar. The wood chips were shipped from the Core facility to the foreign manufacturing facility of one of the leading producers of medium density fiberboard in the world.

In December 2016, Core personnel loaded approximately 45,000 metric tons of wood chips onto the Andalucia, a 590-feet marine vessel, over a three-day period. The wood chips were shipped from Core’s facility to the manufacturing facility of one of the leading producers of medium density fiberboard or MDF.